Nightmare in Paradise
by ProWriter11
Summary: Grissom is arrested for rape and murder. The evidence against him seems irrefutable. He loses everything: his job, his home, his life, and the woman he loves. And then he loses hope. Major GSR.
1. Chapter 1

Here we go again. I'm tired of constantly checking to see if I own any part of CSI. I'm always disappointed to find out I don't. So don't ask me again.

Hey, y'all, if you like this story, check out "Prisoner 4929" by Moonstarer. I defy you to stop once you start.

Anyhow, here we go.

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 1.**

Grissom thought Saturday mornings were the best invention anyone ever came up with.

There had been a time in his life when Saturday mornings meant going to the lab and catching up with paperwork. But when Sara walked back into his life for good, Saturday mornings became occasions to languish in bed, make plans for two days off and make love. They couldn't get enough of one another.

This particular Saturday morning had been especially athletic. As they rested together afterwards – "swapping sweat" Sara called it – Grissom made a compelling argument that he should get a day's gym credit for the workout.

"I bench-pressed you seven times," he said. "That's a great upper-body and core routine. If I have to tell you about the lower-body workout, you weren't paying attention. And it seemed to me you were paying very close attention."

Sara giggled and nested deeper in Grissom's shoulder. She moaned out of pure happiness. Absently, she ran her finger down a long, fading scar on his chest where surgeons had repaired seven broken ribs, a punctured lung and a lacerated liver inflicted several months earlier by a lunatic named Eugene McCaskey. Grissom put a hand on hers and stopped it. He turned his head and kissed her forehead. He didn't want to be reminded that he had died twice as a result of his injuries. He didn't want to remember that McCaskey nearly took Sara's life, as well.

Grissom's nightmares had been horrifying for weeks after he got home from the hospital. Mostly they involved Sara dying at McCaskey's hand in unspeakable ways. Grissom would wake up in a cold sweat, trembling, and Sara would hold him until he quieted. The doctors had warned them the nightmares might happen. Sara had experienced them, too, but she moved on faster than Grissom. He knew getting over his terror would take time. He hadn't been able to describe for anyone just how deeply the McCaskey experience scored him. Sara would have understood, but she had her own dark memories. She didn't need to share his.

"What do you want to do today?" Grissom said. "It's going to be pretty. You want to hike above Lake Mead?"

"Could we just stay in bed all day and keep doing what we've been doing?" Sara said. "Then I might give you credit for a gym day."

"How's Hank going to get his exercise?" Grissom said. "Scratching at the bedroom door doesn't count."

**xxxxxxx**

"Okay, a hike it is," she said. "But there's something I want to do first." She slid her hand down over Grissom's abdomen and beyond. When he responded to her slow, sensual massage, she began kissing him. Not deeply or passionately, but lightly, teasing. His eyes. His mouth. She let her tongue linger in the hollow of his throat and worked it down the chiseled valley between his pecs, thinking the regular work at the gym really had been good for him.

When she used her mouth on his nipples, he groaned and shifted under her. She felt his hands grab her hair.

She trailed down to his navel, his lower abdomen, his thighs. She saw him watching her, desire flushing his face. She glanced into his eyes and grinned seductively. Then she ducked her head to his erection. Her mouth sent an electric charge through his nervous system, and his hips bucked involuntarily. She worked him over with her tongue, her lips and her teeth until his arousal reached frantic proportions. At the last moment, she felt him reach down for her and slide her damp body up his, until their faces were level. He rarely let himself come in her mouth, although she liked it. He preferred it when they climaxed together, eye-to-eye, so to speak. Truth be told, Sara didn't care one way or the other. As long as she was doing this for, and with, him.

He used his tongue on her nipples, already hard and erect, and then followed the same general path she had taken, down her body to her thighs. She writhed under him and groaned when he began using his tongue inside her. She came once. He repositioned himself and entered her, before the first orgasm ended. He moved within her and built the sexual tension to another peak. They went over it together.

When the spasms ran their course, Grissom sighed and started to roll away. She wrapped her arms around him and held him in place. He was still inside her. She didn't want to lose the feeling.

"How did you know I was hoping for a twofer?" she whispered in his ear, punctuating the message with her tongue.

Before he could answer, she moved his head and kissed him with all the passion she could muster.

_Life just doesn't get any better than this._

**xxxxxxx**

After breakfast, they dressed for the hike. For Grissom that meant including in his backpack an array of sample jars in which he could carry back any insects he gathered for his enormous collection. Sara collected butterflies and tucked several glassine envelopes in her backpack for her own samples. There might not be any for either of them, however, since they only collected what was already dead.

They were on their way out, with Hank straining his leash, when the doorbell rang. Grissom frowned.

He glanced at Sara. "Maybe we should hide until they go away."

But he opened the door and was surprised to see Brass standing outside with Ecklie and two uniformed police officers.

"You're a little early for dinner," Grissom said.

No one smiled.

"May we come in?" Brass said.

"Well, actually, we were just headed out," Grissom said.

"Gil, don't make this tougher than it already is," Ecklie said.

Grissom's mind raced, trying to define the situation. He couldn't. So he stood aside for them. Ecklie walked in first, followed by Brass. The two uniforms stopped in front of Grissom. One man turned him around. The other cuffed his hands behind his back.

Grissom felt light-headed when he heard the familiar words from Brass: "Gilbert Grissom, you are under arrest for the rape and murder of Cynthia Seibert. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say …"

Cynthia Seibert? Grissom knew all too well who she was. Her body had been found early Thursday morning in a room at Binion's Gambling Hall, a downtown Las Vegas institution on Fremont Street. Catherine and Nick caught the case. The victim had been raped and garroted. How the hell did that come back to him? He knew Cynthia Seibert only in death. He'd never laid eyes on her in life.

Grissom wanted to ask the question, but he could only stare at Brass in disbelief.

Sara wasn't at all at a loss for words.

"Are you nuts?" she said. "How could you even consider something so absurd? Grissom? A rapist and murderer? You can't be serious."

"As Grissom would tell you himself, the evidence is the evidence," Ecklie said. "I've heard him say it a hundred times."

Grissom found his voice. "What evidence?"

"Your lawyer will tell you," Ecklie said.

Grissom tried frantically to recall where he'd been Wednesday evening. David Phillips had estimated TOD at about 6 p.m., eight hours before the body was found. Grissom suddenly remembered Wednesday, and his heart sank. Sara was at UNLV all day, so he'd taken his camera and driven down to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to photograph bighorn sheep. When he returned to Las Vegas, he went directly to the lab to start his shift. He had no alibi for time Cynthia Seibert was murdered.

"Get him out of here," Ecklie said to the two officers. He turned to Grissom. "By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, you're fired."


	2. Chapter 2

**Nightmare in Paradise**

**Chapter 2.**

Sara tried to push after Grissom as he was led away, but Brass took her arm and held her back. She glared at him.

"I'm going with him," she said and tried to pull free.

Brass stepped in front of her and took both her arms. "You can't, Sara. Even if you trailed the cruiser, you couldn't see him at the jail. He'll be booked, fingerprinted and put in a cell. He won't be seen in public again until he's arraigned."

Her eyes welled, as much in anger as sadness. "You. Of all people."

"I had some notion that my being here would help," he said. "Obviously, I was deluded."

"What's the evidence, Brass?" she said. "You've got to tell me."

"DNA. The rapist didn't use a condom. When the lab ran the DNA, the, uh, coding sequences, uh …"

"Alleles," Sara said.

"Yeah, those, matched up perfectly with Grissom's, which were on file because of his job."

Sara felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. "This can't be," she said. "There has to be a mistake. It's ludicrous." She stopped suddenly, and her eyes bored Brass's. "If Grissom were a rapist and a killer, don't you think he'd know by now how _not_ to leave his DNA behind? Think about it, Brass. He's a criminalist, for God's sake."

"I know, Sara. The same thing occurred to me. Maybe he's got an alibi, but it's still going to be awfully hard to refute the evidence."

Sara remembered Wednesday just the way Grissom did. Her head fell.

Brass pressed her. "Does he have an alibi? Was he with you?"

She shook her head silently.

"Do you know where he was?"

"He told me he went to Lake Mead to take photos," she said.

"Well, get his camera," Brass said, a little optimism in his voice. "He shoots digital. The photos will have time and date stamps."

"He was looking for bighorn sheep. He told me he didn't spot any."

"Well, maybe he shot something else. Where's the camera?"

Sara got it and handed it to Brass. He ran the contents of the flash memory card. There were three shots of the Lake Mead area. The last one was timed at 2:32 p.m. Since the recreation area was less than 30 miles from Las Vegas, that left more than enough time for Grissom to get back to the city for the fatal encounter at Binion's.

"There's no mistake, Sara," Brass said with profound sadness. "Catherine ran and reran the DNA four times. She wouldn't let anyone else touch it after the initial finding. It came back to Gil every time."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in thought.

"Do you believe it, Jim?" Sara asked.

"I don't want to, no. It seems so … so wrong. But …"

"I know. The goddamned evidence. And Ecklie's already tried and convicted Gil."

"Well, that's Ecklie."

"What can I do?" Sara said. "Gil didn't do this thing. He couldn't. He's been framed."

"How, Sara? The sperm inside Cynthia Seibert belonged to Gil."

"Maybe it was stolen."

"How do you steal a man's sperm?"

"There was a book once, about a woman who had sex with her husband and saved the condom he used. Then she killed her husband's mistress and planted the sperm from the condom in her to frame her husband for the murder."

"Yeah," Brass said. "_Presumed Innocent._ I saw the movie. This isn't a movie. And so far as I know, you're the only woman who might have access to a condom containing Grissom's sperm. You're the only woman in his life."

"He doesn't use a condom. I'm on the pill."

"More than I wanted to know," Brass said with a small smile that didn't reflect amusement.

"I have to help him." Sara looked utterly miserable.

"You can't get involved in the investigation. You're a civilian now. Even if you went back to the lab, they wouldn't let you work on the case. It's a clear conflict of interest."

Sara was growing more frustrated by the minute.

"Then what _can_ I do?" she said.

Brass stood and heaved a sigh.

He put a hand on Sara's shoulder. "Get him a good lawyer. And fast."

**xxxxxxx**

Grissom sat in an interrogation room at police headquarters, shackled to a table. He found the experience both frightening and humiliating. He could feel the eyes of people on the other side of the observation window, some probably friends, others probably total strangers, who came by to look in on his predicament. He tried to project a confident front, an attitude that conveyed his sense of innocence. But the interminable wait for the interrogation wore him down. He finally turned in his seat so gawkers could glimpse only the back of his head.

The fear was palpable. Grissom had no alibi for Wednesday. And if the DNA of the sperm found inside Cynthia Seibert perfectly matched his, he probably had a nearly impossible uphill battle against the rape and murder charges. If he couldn't prove his innocence, he faced execution or a lifetime in the Nevada State Prison – a lifetime bound to be cut short by the presence of so many violent felons he had helped put in that very institution.

Even if his attorney, whomever that turned out to be, could generate sufficient reasonable doubt to buy a not-guilty verdict, who would ever really believe it? Ecklie had tried and convicted him already. So his job in Las Vegas was gone. His profession would slam the door on him, too, most likely. What city would hire a criminalist with the depth of taint he would wear forever? Would any university hire him to teach? Not likely.

His only hope lay in the reality that he was, in fact, not guilty. Would anyone actually try to prove that, or was everyone at the lab resigned to believe what the DNA told them? God knows he had preached it often enough: The evidence is the evidence, and the evidence doesn't lie.

Sara would do what she could, of course, but how long could she hold out against the odds of the evidence? At some point, even she would have to acknowledge, however reluctantly, that he had to be guilty.

And if she abandoned him, he would prefer to die.

The interrogation door opened. Grissom didn't look up until he heard the chair across the table scrape the floor.

"So the great Gilbert Grissom finds himself in a pot of boiling oil. I can't say I'm completely saddened to see you in handcuffs. There was a time I would have taken some joy in it."

Grissom remembered the man well. Adam Novak. Recovering alcoholic, public defender-turned tenacious criminal defense attorney and all-around creep. However, Novak would have some empathy with Grissom. The lawyer, back in his drinking days, had been accused of murdering a young woman he picked up in a bar, a charge made more believable by the fact that he had tried, rather roughly, to pick up Catherine in the same bar earlier in the evening. Novak had been cleared, and the experience sobered him.

Someone, apparently, had retained Novak to defend Grissom. Grissom wasn't sure how he felt about it. He decided to say nothing and see where the conversation led.

"You're not going to believe who asked me to take your case," Novak said. "Catherine Willows, the same woman who once was so ready to convict me of murder. The same woman who led the investigation that put you in the same spot. I find it fascinating the way life takes quirky turns."

Still, Grissom said nothing.

Novak smiled and shook his head.

"Here's the way it works, Grissom. You say nothing to the police, but you talk to me. If you don't talk to me, I won't take your case. And if I don't take your case, who's going to? At face value, it looks hopeless. Most lawyers don't do hopeless. I don't do hopeless. But then, I don't always take matters at face value. So talk to me."

Grissom inhaled deeply and sighed. "What do you want to know?"

"Take me through your day on Wednesday."

"I left the lab a little after 6 a.m., went directly home and then to bed," Grissom said. "It had been an exhausting shift, and I was beat. I got up around noon and decided to drive down to Lake Mead with my camera. By the time I got back, it was nearly time to begin my shift, so I went to the lab, showered, put on clean clothes and went to work."

"And what time was that?"

"I got to the lab about 7:45 p.m."

"Wednesday?"

"Yes."

"Almost two hours after Ms. Sibert's estimated time of death?"

Grissom nodded.

"And nobody saw you at all between the two shifts?"

"Not that I know of," Grissom said. "My fiancée, Sara Sidle, was asleep when I got home from work, and she was gone when I got up. I called her and told her I was driving down to Lake Mead. But the next time I saw her, or anyone else outside the lab, was Thursday morning, maybe seven, seven-thirty."

"And that was five hours or so after Ms. Seibert's body was found." Novak was creating a timeline on a yellow legal tablet.

"Yes."

"So you left the lab on Wednesday morning after your shift at 6 a.m. Ms. Sidle probably noticed you in bed with her sometime between 6:30 or so and noon on Wednesday, when she woke up?" Grissom nodded. "You didn't see another living human being who knew you until your next shift started on Wednesday evening between 7 and 8, a couple of hours after Cynthia Seibert died?"

"That's right," Grissom said. Novak expelled a breath from ballooned cheeks, an acknowledgment of Grissom's obvious uphill battle with circumstance.

"Do you get any kind of official receipt when you left the park, something that might have a time stamp on it that would prove you were out of the city when Ms. Seibert died?"

Grissom shook his head. "I don't even have an entry receipt," he said. "I buy annual passes. You just flash them and get waved in." Grissom pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his forehead. He tried to blink away the spots in front of his eyes. A migraine was getting a foothold.

"Do you know if there are video cameras at the park gates?"

"I don't know. I never noticed. Maybe. What difference does it make? The truth is I left the part before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, which was plenty of time to get back to Vegas to … you know."

"Why did you leave so early?"

"It was pouring rain. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face, let alone bighorn sheep."

"That must have slowed traffic a lot."

Grissom glanced at Novak, knowing where he was taking this. "No," he said. "Not that much. It took maybe 40 minutes to get back here instead of 30."

"Were you drinking that day?"

"What?" Grissom thought that an odd question. "No. Why?"

"Because," Novak said, "I can't reconcile why a trained CSI, especially one with your experience, would leave behind the evidence that could cost him his life."

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "My point, exactly," he said.

"Do you want my representation?" Novak said.

"Yes," Grissom said. "Thank you."

Novak stood. "Don't thank me for anything yet," he said. "I tend to believe you're not guilty. I haven't the foggiest idea how we're going to prove it."


	3. Chapter 3

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 3.**

When Novak returned, Brass and another detective named Casco were with him. Casco, a man Grissom knew only slightly, was solidly built, mid-40s, with brown eyes so dark it was difficult to tell where the pupils left off and the irises began. Grissom knew he was the lead detective on the Seibert case.

Casco sat down directly across from Grissom. Brass took the chair at the end of the table, to Grissom's right. Novak pulled a chair around and sat next to Grissom.

Grissom wished Brass could handle the case himself, but that was impossible, of course. The two of them were too close, too friendly, and everyone in Las Vegas justice system knew it. A police investigation run by Brass would be almost as suspect as a forensics investigation run by Sara.

"Let's get to it, shall we?" Casco said.

Novak interrupted. "Before you begin, I'm advising my client to answer none of your questions unless I say it's all right. So please direct your questions to me."

Grissom thought that attitude made him look guilty as charged, but as long as he was trusting Novak with his defense, he had to take his advice, for now, anyway.

"Dr. Grissom, is it your intention to invoke the Fifth Amendment?" Casco said.

"No," Novak said. "He will answer those questions I instruct him to answer."

Casco's eyes never left Grissom's. Grissom knew the routine. Intimidation wouldn't work on him.

"Take us through your activities from the time you left the crime lab after your shift on Wednesday morning, April 2 to the end of your shift on Thursday, April 3."

Grissom glanced at Novak, who nodded. And so he went through it again, as precisely as he could, the same story he told Novak. The truth.

"Are you familiar with Binion's Gambling Hall on Fremont?"

Novak nodded again.

"I am."

"Were you there at any time in the 24- or 25-hour period you've described?"

"No," Grissom said.

"You're sure."

"Of course I am."

"Did you know Cynthia Seibert?"

Novak nodded.

"I know who she was because my team caught her murder investigation," Grissom said. "To my knowledge, I never met the victim when she was alive. The name meant absolutely nothing to me."

Casco's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you simply didn't know her name when you raped and killed her."

"That's enough," Novak said. "That wasn't a question."

"This isn't a courtroom, Counselor," Casco said. "But I will rephrase." He turned back to Grissom. "Did you kill Cynthia Seibert?"

"No," Grissom said.

"Can you explain how your semen got into her body?"

"No."

"You're lying."

Grissom kept his voice calm though his gut was wound tight. "I'm not."

Casco stood up so suddenly he knocked his chair over. It clattered to the concrete floor, and Grissom started.

"Are you listening to yourself?" he said, his voice rising. "Is that the story you're to tell a jury? There's not a shred of credibility there. You are a smug, sanctimonious sonofabitch. You're assuming because you used to be a CSI, the system's going to go easy on you."

Grissom winced at the past tense. Novak placed a restraining hand on Grissom's arm, and Grissom remained silent.

"You're fooling yourself." Casco said. "If anything the system's going to make an example of you. That's already the scuttlebutt around the courthouse. Your only chance to get out of this with your life is to tell the truth now."

"I _am _telling the truth." Grissom looked resolute.

"I find that hard to believe. Actually, I find it impossible to believe. Do you have an alternate theory? Can you explain the presence of your semen in the victim?"

Novak intervened. "He already answered that question. He said, no."

Casco never took his eyes from Grissom's face. "You know this means the death penalty, right? I just want to be sure you understand."

Grissom refused to look away from Casco's stare. He also refused to rise to the bait.

"Nothing left to say?" the detective asked.

"I think we've covered everything," Grissom said, his voice unwavering.

"You're despicable," Casco said. "If you want to play hardball, you've picked the wrong slugger to challenge."

He turned and left the room. Grissom began to breathe again.

He knew Casco's attitude was an act. He'd seen the play before. But he couldn't deny it rattled him.

"You think that melodrama was really necessary?" Novak said to Brass. Brass shrugged.

Grissom caught Brass's eye. But Brass looked away quickly.

_If my friends can't look me in the eye, how's a jury of strangers going to feel?_

**xxxxxxx**

The prosecution moved very fast.

The grand jury handed up a six-count indictment against Grissom in just two hours of deliberation on Monday morning. He was arraigned first thing Monday afternoon. It was a high-profile case with a high-profile suspect. Reporters and spectators filled the courtroom. Grissom scanned the crowd quickly, avoiding lengthy eye contact. He didn't see anyone he knew, though there were faces he recognized.

Catherine hadn't come. Brass hadn't come. Nobody on the team had come, not even Ecklie, who might have showed up just to gloat.

Even Sara hadn't come.

_Why didn't Sara come? It stunned him to think she had given up on him already._

He had begun to feel the despair the night before. He had lost everything. A distinguished career. His reputation. His best friends. The woman he loved. And perhaps his life, not that his life was worth much any more.

He stood in the courtroom beside Adam Novak. Grissom wore an orange jail jumpsuit, accessorized with shackles on his wrists and ankles. Novak had asked that Grissom be allowed to wear a suit. The request was denied.

Grissom heard his case called. He heard the charges read. He heard Judge Madeline Griffin ask for his plea. He heard Novak say, "Not guilty, Your Honor."

Judge Griffin asked Prosecutor John Stennum, "Is it your intention to seek the death penalty?"

"It is, Your Honor," Stennum replied.

The judge bound Grissom over for trial on May 26, almost two months away.

Novak asked the judge to release Grissom on his own recognizance pending the trial. Stennum sounded incredulous.

"Your Honor, there's no ROR – there's not even bail – for a defendant in a heinous capital case like this," he said. The two lawyers argued the matter back and forth. Judge Griffin said she tended to agree with the prosecutor, that Grissom should spend the next seven weeks in jail.

Novak asked the judge for a sidebar. She motioned him and the prosecutor to the bench. Grissom could hear the hushed conversation, but no one in the audience could.

"Your Honor, Grissom's life is going to be in danger in jail," Novak said. "There are probably a dozen people or more in the general population who would love to kill him regardless of the consequences to themselves."

Stennum shrugged. "So put him in solitary," he suggested.

"Seven weeks of solitary confinement seems awfully harsh for a man who hasn't been convicted of anything," Novak said. "Put Grissom under house arrest. Make him wear the bracelet. But let him go home."

"I'll take it under advisement," the judge said. "I want him examined by a psychiatrist first. Make that happen as quickly as possible," she told the prosecutor. "Meantime, Dr. Grissom goes back to a cell."

"Thank you, Your Honor," Novak said.

Stennum started to object, but Judge Griffin wouldn't listen. "You'll get another shot at this," she told the prosecutor. "Let's see what the shrink has to say."

Grissom bowed his head and closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, his heart rate. He wasn't sure he wanted to go home, even if the judge granted his attorney's request. It seemed there was nothing left for him there.

When he opened his eyes, he was staring at the floor. He was led away and never raised his head. He couldn't. It seemed too heavy.

**xxxxxxx**

Grissom didn't see Sara wedged against the wall at the rear of the courtroom. Her arrival had been delayed by television reporters on the courthouse steps. They refused to let her pass without giving them some comment on Cynthia Seibert's rape and murder, some comment on Grissom's state of mind, his drug and drinking habits, her own most personal feelings. Finally, silent, anxious and angry, she pushed her way through the microphones and cameras. She made it into the courtroom seconds after Grissom had looked for her and not found her.

As hard as she tried to get his attention as he was taken away, he wouldn't look up.

_My God. He must think I didn't come. _

As the courtroom emptied, Sara was struck by the totality of abandonment and loss Grissom must be feeling at that moment. She sagged against the wall and began to feel sick.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N **Thanks to everyone for the great reviews. Don't stop now, even if there's something you don't like.

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 4.**

Grissom couldn't have known it and might not have believed it, but no one on his team had abandoned him. Brass, Catherine, Warrick, Nick and Greg all were pulling doubles, trying to wrap up a swarm of bizarre occurrences that plagued Las Vegas early Monday morning. All the team members had planned to be in the courtroom for Grissom's arraignment, to support him and Sara, but they found themselves scattered over the city sorting through "a plague of insanity," as Nick called it.

At the Cold Cash, a 72-year-old woman who had lost several thousand dollars playing a seven-foot Big Bertha slot machine got tired of her luck. She found a way to reach into the machine – whether to reset the payout sequences or to try to retrieve some money no one knew. But the machine ripped her hand off, and she was found by another patron, dead on the floor behind the slot, her arm still caught up in the Big Bertha. "It gives a whole new meaning to the term, 'blood money,'" Warrick said when he saw the scene.

A frozen body had dropped onto the Las Vegas Expressway from an Airbus 320 inbound from Toronto for landing at McCarran International Airport. The most obvious explanation made the DB a stowaway who froze to death during the hours the plane was flying above 30,000 feet. He made his premature "deplaning" from the left main gear housing when the crew went wheels down for landing.

Security officials at Western LV Medical Center called for help when a patient in the cardiac ICU screamed that he was being beaten to death. Nurses on the wing told police they had seen nothing out of the ordinary in the ICU all night. And an examination of the 87-year-old patient found no signs of trauma. The "victim" had suffered a heart attack two days earlier. His doctors said he'd probably had a nightmare.

And a retired Carney side-show worker known during his career as The Fish-Faced Boy (and who grew into The Fish-Faced Man and an abusive husband) was stabbed to death by his wife after he ran her down with his electric wheel chair.

Not to mention the "normal" assortments of mayhem.

It was three in the afternoon, when Warrick slumped down next to Nick and started shedding his soiled clothes.

"Anybody know what happened with Gris?" he said.

"Yeah," Nick said. "He was arraigned and bound over for trial sometime late in May. Can you believe it? Indicted and arraigned in the space of three hours. Why can't we get that kind of judicial efficiency for the guilty guys?"

"So you're holding out hope he's not guilty?"

"Yeah, I am. For one thing, I don't believe Grissom could have done something like they say he did. He's told us time and again that one of the things he can't tolerate is any form is violence against women. For another, if it was rough sex gone bad, he's the kind of stand-up guy who would have tried to save the woman and called for help, then owned up to what happened. And third, I'm pretty sure Sara's not leaving him much energy in that regard. He came in the other evening looking stripped. I asked him if he was okay. He said he was fine, but exhausted. And he smiled real big when he said it."

Warrick shook his head. "Rape isn't about sex …"

"I know. It's about violence. You ever seen Grissom violent?"

"No."

"Me, neither. I don't think he's guilty of this, despite the DNA. I'm thinking the semen was planted."

"But it _was _his semen," Warrick said.

"What's your point?"

"If he'd donated his semen or ejaculated somewhere it could be collected, don't you figure he'd remember? I certainly would."

Nick shook his head. "I'm tellin' you, there's an explanation for this."

"I hope so," Warrick said. "Maybe we should talk to his lawyer, Novak, and see if there's anything we can do – off the clock and off the record."

**xxxxxxx**

"You can't," Catherine said. "As much as I want you to, and as much as I would join you in a cocaine heartbeat, anything probative we collect could be excluded. The prosecution will claim bias."

"I don't think that's true," Warrick said. "We collected the original evidence."

"We didn't know then it would implicate Grissom," Catherine said. "As soon as it did, Ecklie gave the whole package to the day shift."

"Look, we're all professionals," Nick said. "I say we just keep collecting evidence and documenting it very carefully. That's what we do. If we find something exculpatory, we have to report it. At the risk of sounding redundant, the evidence is the evidence."

Catherine thought about that for a moment. "Yeah, but who's going to believe us?"

A new voice. Ecklie. No one spotted him standing in the hall. Now he entered the room.

"You ran the investigation that indicted him," he said to Catherine. "You can't run the investigation that exonerates him. I can. Everyone knows his history with me. If I present contradictory evidence, you really think anybody's going to think I fabricated it because I'm his friend?"

"You're still CSI," Warrick said. "The fraternity, and all that."

"Then the evidence we present will have to be even more convincing in Grissom's favor than the evidence against him," Ecklie said.

The whole team was looking at Ecklie in disbelief.

"You don't think Grissom's guilty?" Catherine said. "You fired him."

"I did what regulations required me to do. But you'll notice I haven't replaced him. I also haven't filled out any termination papers. In the first blush, this case looked irrefutable. It still does. But the circumstances really don't fit Grissom. So I'm waiting to see how it all plays out."

"How do you want us to proceed?" Catherine said.

"I'll tell you what I'm willing to do," Ecklie said. "If you people want to work on your own to find an alternative truth, it can't be on lab time, and it can't be at lab expense. But I will authorize it and directly supervise it and take the heat if things go wrong. I'm counting on each of you to make sure things don't go wrong."

"What about Sara?" Greg said. "We could really use another set of eyes and a new perspective."

Ecklie started to say no, but stopped himself and thought about it.

"Okay, none of this is by-the-book, so you might just as well bring her in," he said, finally. "_But_ she cannot have access to the lab. And she absolutely cannot have access to the existing evidence. She also can't collect new evidence. So if she notices something, one of you will gather the evidence and take responsibility for the chain of custody. One of you will process with me present and supervising. There can't be any exceptions. Understood?"

Catherine smiled. "Conrad, you have a heart after all," she said.


	5. Chapter 5

I'm giving you a longish chapter this time with the news that it could be this afternoon (eastern time zone, U.S.) before I can get another chapter ready. Yes, I know the entire story is written already. But it has to be reformatted for this venue, and I'm swamped with real work right now. I promise to come back as soon as I can, especially if I get some reviews.

By the way, I checked my investment portfolio this morning, and I _still_ own nothing related to CSI. It's a shame.

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 5.**

Tuesday morning. Sara sat and waited for the telephone to ring. She wasn't exactly waiting patiently.

She had tried to see Grissom after his arraignment, but he was being processed through the system and wouldn't be allowed to have visitors until the next day. Alarmed he would think nobody cared about him, Sara appealed to Brass.

"I need help, Jim. I don't think Grissom has seen any friendly faces since he was arrested Saturday. They wouldn't let me near him Sunday or after court yesterday. Can you get me in? Please?"

"We have to let the system work, Sara, but I'll see if I can't get something in process for later today."

So Sara waited.

**xxxxxxx**

Grissom turned to let the mid-morning sun bathe his face. He had been given an hour to exercise outside, to walk, run, shoot hoops with other prisoners, lift weights. He walked laps around the yard, counting his steps, trying to measure the distance he covered. He passed another prisoner. He wasn't paying particular attention to the man because he'd been told morning exercise schedules had been rearranged to insure he was in the presence of only those convicted of or accused of non-violent crimes.

"We wouldn't want somebody killing you before the state gets its chance," a guard told him. Grissom leveled a hard gaze at the guard and held his temper, but a muscle that began to jump above his right jaw betrayed his feelings. He'd been made to shave, so the reaction was clear to anyone looking. The guard smiled.

Grissom was thinking about that incident when the prisoner he'd just passed stuck a foot between Grissom's and tripped him. Grissom went down hard, the breath forced from his lungs. He watched the prisoner's retreating back. No one made a move to help him as he lay on the ground, trying to refill his lungs. To all the eyes that saw the incident, it was exactly what a rapist and murderer deserved.

Grissom stood up and felt his right knee crack. It must have hit the ground first. There would be no more power walking this morning.

So he stood with his back to a jail wall and let the sun warm him. He closed his eyes and thought of Sara. The melancholy that had been sitting on his spirit since Saturday grew a little deeper, a little bleaker.

Grissom never saw the 11-ounce rock that smashed into his left temple after a brief flight from a hand attached to a body standing five feet away. He didn't feel himself hit the ground for the second time in 30 minutes. He didn't feel the blood bathing his face or see the four-inch gash to the bone.

The guards began moving all the prisoners back inside. Nobody rushed to Grissom's aid. They left him lying in the brown dust in the sun, his blood soaking the earth. He had gotten exactly what a rapist and murderer deserved.

**xxxxxxx**

The doorbell rang. Hank leaped to greet someone. Sara felt badly for the dog. He probably expected Grissom. Hank obviously missed his best friend. Sara knew how the dog felt.

It was Brass. He petted Hank and hugged Sara. When Sara pushed back from the embrace, she saw trouble in Brass's eyes.

"What?" she said. She couldn't quite breathe.

"He's been hurt," Brass said. Then he hastened to add, "He'll be fine, but he's in the hospital. He got hit in the head with a rock. The cut needed 18 stitches. He has a concussion. He's groggy. Really groggy. But we can go see him, as long as I stay with you. Okay?"

Sara said nothing then. She allowed Brass to guide her to his car. She said nothing during the ride to the hospital. The thought of seeing Grissom in yet another hospital bed, with yet another surgical dressing on his head, in pain again, made her physically ill.

Brass escorted her to a locked and guarded door. He had to sign them in and turn over his gun. The sign next to the door read, "Prison Unit." Sara began to tremble. She felt Brass's arm circle her shoulders and hold tight.

"Stay tough, Kiddo," he said. "He needs to see you tough."

They approached his bed together. The sight of him made her chest hurt. His eyes were closed. The only color in his skin belonged to the blood seeping through a sterile gauze patch on the left side of his head. She noticed that his right hand was shackled to the bed frame. She took his left hand in both of hers. He opened his eyes. Sara thought he looked exhausted. Not the way he looked after a tough double shift when a good eight hours of sleep would regenerate him. More as if he'd been drained like an old battery, never to recharge again. Sara looked at his eyes, the eyes she'd never been able to resist. They had gone dull and sad.

"Hi," Grissom said. He sounded hoarse, the way a voice gets when it goes unused for a while.

"Hi," she said. She didn't feel like smiling, but she did, because she knew he loved her smile. "I miss you. How are you feeling?"

She saw him flinch. He sidestepped her question and went right to his.

"You weren't in court yesterday," he said. No recrimination. Just curiosity.

"Yes, I was," she said and explained how she'd been delayed, why the rest of the team hadn't made it to court. She saw his face relax marginally.

"I thought …" Grissom started to say something and stopped. Sara knew what he was choking back.

"Everyone knows you're not guilty," she said. "They'll find a way to prove it."

Grissom sighed heavily. "I wish I could tell you how this happened. Just know I didn't rape anyone. I didn't kill anyone."

"I believe that, Gil."

"That means everything to me."

Grissom squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. She loosened one of her hands from his and ran it through his hair as she leaned over and kissed him gently. A guard intervened.

"Step back, please," he ordered. She held the kiss, a small act of defiance, and then retreated. She winked at Grissom, anticipating a smile in return. She didn't get it, and that made her sad.

"Don't lose hope, Gil," she said. "Please. Don't give up."

**xxxxxxx**

"How're you holding up?" Catherine asked. She had come to the house shortly after Sara returned from the hospital. Sara was grateful for the company. She needed distractions.

"I told him not to lose hope," Sara said. "But his eyes … the look on his face … he seems so beaten down already. She looked at Catherine. "His job defined him, at least to his mind. He looks like he's losing himself. And I feel completely helpless." Sara sagged into a chair, then looked back at Catherine. "I'm sorry. Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

"I'm fine, thanks. I guess my timing is impeccable. I'm here to put you to work. Make you feel useful."

"What?"

"The team's back on this case, under Ecklie's personal direction."

"Ecklie?" That didn't compute. "He fired Gil on Saturday."

"He hasn't terminated him," Catherine said. "After Ecklie thought about it, I guess he began to see what the rest of us saw, that the whole sorry mess just doesn't sound like Grissom behavior. I don't know if Ecklie is as convinced as the rest of us that Grissom's not guilty, but he is going to give us a personally supervised chance to prove it. And he's going to let you help."

Sara was stunned and thrilled. And eager to begin.

Catherine briefed Sara on the limitations Ecklie imposed on her involvement, and Sara understood.

"What _can_ I do, then?" she said.

Catherine handed over a manila envelope. "That's the whole file. Everything. Read it. Study it. Think about it. Dream about it. Find something the rest of us missed."

**xxxxxxx**

When Grissom returned to his cell, he couldn't help but contemplate spending the rest of his life in the gray, bleak surroundings of prison confinement. If the team couldn't satisfactorily explain how his semen got into Cynthia Seibert, and if he were convicted of her rape and murder, he thought death might be preferable to 40 years of this.

_Stop it!_ Sara had asked him not to lose hope. The least he could do for her is try. Now that he knew the evidence was under investigation again, he would serve his cause more productively if he could come up with alternatives to the scenario painted by the prosecution.

Grissom noticed that his cellmate was gone. He wondered if it was a temporary situation or a move to heighten his security. He knew he would sleep better if he didn't have to worry about getting shanked in the night. Come to think about it, any change in his sleep patterns would be an improvement.

He stretched out on his bunk, closed his eyes and tried to think.

**xxxxxxx**

When Catherine left, Sara's great urge was to tear into the investigation file. But first she pulled out a legal pad and made a list of all the questions for which she had no answers:

1. Did anybody take fingerprints in the dead woman's room?

2. Did anyone check the videotape from Binion's to determine whether Grissom was there that night?

3. This one's a stretch. Did anyone ask G. if he'd ever been a sperm donor (on the possibility the semen was stolen and planted)?

Well, that's stupid, Sara thought. Why would Grissom donate sperm? On the other hand, no one really knew that much about his life history beyond the professional side of it. Maybe there was something in his past personal life that might have prompted a donation. But then how would a killer get possession of the sample to plant on a rape victim? Sara silently reprimanded herself for not asking Grissom the question when she had a chance. She hadn't thought of it until she was driving home.

She opened the investigations file and started through it page by page. At midnight, she made herself a pot of coffee. She wouldn't see a bed for a long time.

**xxxxxxx**

She found answers to questions 1 and 2 almost immediately. The entire suite had been dusted. No fingerprints found that couldn't be explained. No fingerprints belonging to Grissom. Of course Grissom had access to an endless supply of latex gloves. On the other hand, she thought, why would Grissom wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and not wear a condom?

This case was just getting stupid.

The videos from Binion's didn't catch Grissom anywhere.

Well, that's exculpatory, Sara thought. Then she found the hole. The cameras at the employee entrance and at the loading dock were broken and out for repair.

But that still left question #3.

Sara went through her notes, found Alan Novak's phone number and looked at the clock. It was 1:37 a.m. Well, what the hell. If she wasn't sleeping, Novak shouldn't be sleeping, either.

"Hello?" The tone of the voice said, "I'm asleep and what do you want?"

Sara introduced herself. She told Novak about the new crime lab investigation.

"I'm familiar with it," he said. "Conrad Ecklie filled me in. He said all communications should go through him."

"Yeah, well, this isn't something Ecklie would know," Sara said. "Did you ever ask Grissom if he had ever been a sperm donor, or if he could think of any time and place where he might have left a, um, a condom that somebody could have taken?"

"Ms. Sidle, yes, I'm not an idiot," Novak said. "I've been through every possible scenario with him. Including that one."

Sara sighed in disappointment. "So, obviously, you're saying there's nothing to track there."

"No, Sara. There's nothing there. We have explored every single possible alternative explanation on the face of the earth, and nothing works. I don't have any new working theories. I'm really sorry. Now, please, may I go back to sleep?"

**xxxxxxx**

Sara refused to be discouraged. She sifted through all the notes, all the test results, all the interview transcripts. At the very back of the file, she came upon photographs. Mostly they involved Cynthia Seibert's condition when her body was found, and autopsy photos.

The bruising from the rape was obvious and extensive. The external visible damage done to her neck when she was garroted with a lamp cord consisted of one deep line of discoloration. No hesitation marks. The killer never doubted what he wanted the outcome to be.

No one who knew Grissom could believe him capable of this.

Sara flipped through the rest of the photos. Blood stains. Ejaculate stains. Ejaculate and blood smears. Microscopic photographs of the sperm found inside Cynthia Seibert.

Sara came to the end of the file and closed it with profound sadness.

Novak was right.

There was nothing to find.

The evidence against Grissom was as air-tight as she'd ever seen.

Sara fell back on the sofa and let sheer exhaustion take her to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Another long one. I'm trying to get through this for you as quickly as possible. People are sending me angst bombs.

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 6.**

When the morning sun roused her, Sara had a catch in her neck and the memory of a dream about sperm. The pain in her neck could be explained by the odd angle of her head against the arm of the sofa. The reason for the dream about sperm was obvious. The case against Grissom obsessed her.

Or was there something more to it?

Sara put on a pot of coffee and returned to the case file, to the photographs in the back. She stopped at the photo of the semen sample recovered from Cynthia Seibert. The three-dimensional appearance of the individual sperm meant the image was taken using scanning electron microscopy. SEM produced very high-resolution images. But the sperm appeared distorted somehow, as if the photo had been taken with a fisheye, super wide-angle camera lens. Which didn't make sense. Microscopy was used to magnify small samples, not to image landscapes.

Sara rubbed her eyes, poured herself a mug of coffee and carried to the bathroom where she let a hot shower massage her neck and work out the kink.

It didn't really matter what the sperm looked like, did it?

This case was all about DNA.

**xxxxxxx**

Catherine was doing her own case file review.

She had stayed at the lab after her shift ended to coordinate her team.

Archie had volunteered to review again the Binion's videos for the hours surrounding Cynthia Seibert's death. Grissom wasn't on those videos, meaning if he was guilty, he had entered and left through the employee or loading dock doors, both of which were temporarily without video coverage. But Archie thought he might spot something else if he looked hard enough. A long shot, but worth the effort. He simply needed to feel he was making a contribution.

Nick, Greg and Warrick were at Binion's, re-interviewing guests who were there the night of the murder and hadn't yet checked out, and staff who might have heard or seen something relevant. Sophia was working the telephones, trying to reach those previously interviewed guests who had checked out.

Bobby Dawson, Mandy, Wendy and even Hodges had volunteered to stay and help. There was nothing for them to do, and Catherine asked them to get some sleep so they could back up the rest of the team if they were needed.

"If we get anything new," she said, "we'll need all of you fresh so no one can say we misinterpreted evidence out of exhaustion."

Even Ecklie stopped by on the way to his office.

"Call if you need me," he told Catherine.

**xxxxxxx**

Brass made it his mission to keep an eye on Grissom. He couldn't talk to his friend about the case. If Grissom revealed anything probative, Brass would be obligated to report it to Det. Casco. Brass didn't even want to think what Alan Novak's reaction would be if he heard a cop had been talking to his client. He wouldn't want any conversation to take place without him – no matter how innocuous.

But Brass thought Grissom should know he was staying in touch with Sara, and that she was holding up as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

When Brass reached the cell, he found Grissom lying on his bunk, an arm thrown over his eyes. He couldn't tell if Grissom was sleeping, thinking or fighting one of his migraines. So he stood and watched for a few minutes. Grissom apparently sensed a new presence. He lowered his arm and turned his head. He looked surprised.

"Can we talk a minute?" Brass said.

"Not without my lawyer," Grissom said.

"It's not about the case," Brass said. "It's just about two friends … catching up."

"My side of that conversation would be pretty short," Grissom said.

Brass heard the sarcasm. Grissom was angry about his situation and about Casco's interrogation techniques. "Look, about Saturday, Casco was a little over the top. And I'm sorry. But I couldn't intervene. I'm not supposed to have anything to do with the case. I came today to see if you were okay and to talk about Sara."

Grissom sat up abruptly. "What about her? Did something happen?" Grissom looked so pained Brass thought he would have given a years' salary if he could send Grissom back to Sara, a free man.

"She's holding up," Brass said. "I talk to her at least twice a day, just checking in. She's worried sick. But she's tough. You have her full support."

Grissom put his elbows on his knees. He dropped his head into his hands.

"What about you?" Brass said. "Are you holding up? How's your head?"

Grissom sidestepped the questions. Instead he asked, "You think there's a prayer I'll be allowed to go home before the trial?"

"I think a lot depends on what the psychiatrist has to say after he examines you. It would be highly unusual in a capital case, but given your admirable record to this point, I think it will at least get some consideration."

"That doesn't sound very optimistic," Grissom said.

"It is what it is, Gil."

"So when's this shrink coming? The judge said she wanted the report asap."

"He'll be here at three this afternoon," Brass said. "Your lawyer has been notified."

**xxxxxxx**

The body was found just after 10 p.m. at an I-15 underpass east of The Strip.

She was blonde, about 25, lying face down and naked except for the silk scarf knotted around her neck so tightly David Phillips couldn't get even his small finger under it to look at the injury.

"I'll cut it off when we get her on the table," he said to Catherine and Greg, who had taken the call. "It looks as if she was raped." Phillips pointed to serious bruises on the insides of her thighs. "We'll do a kit and get it over to you." He plunged what appeared to be a meat thermometer into her midsection. He watched the needle advance, measuring her liver temperature. "Looks like she died about three hours ago," he said.

He manipulated her arms and rolled her over to look at her chest and abdomen.

"Rigor. Lividity." He said was mostly talking to himself, going through his checklist. "She wasn't killed here."

"Dumped?" Greg said.

"That'd be my guess," Phillips said. "There's another crime scene out there you haven't found yet."

**xxxxxxx**

By the time Catherine and Greg returned to the lab, the rape kit had arrived and Mia was processing it.

"Let me know what you find," Catherine said.

"I already found something pretty interesting," Mia said. "There was semen, and I got a hit on the rapist's DNA."

Catherine was overcome by a wave of déjà vu. This was the way the Cynthia Seibert case unfolded.

"Who?" Catherine said.

Mia tapped a request into her computer. The face that appeared above the text information was a good-looking, middle-aged man with a buzz cut and a blue military uniform just visible at the bottom of the frame. The silver clusters made him a lieutenant colonel. His name was Michael Everly.

"Was he arrested for something?" Greg asked.

"No," Mia said. "He has a clean record."

"Then how do we have a DNA comparison?"

"It's called 'DNA dogtagging,'" Catherine said. "It's somewhat controversial. The program was started to help ID the bodies of military personnel who couldn't be identified any other way. The military keeps the information confidential, but law enforcement has access."

Catherine scanned down the information. "Ah, it's Lieutenant Colonel Michael Everly, _retired_," she said. "Last known address, uh, here. North Las Vegas. Out near Nellis. Makes sense. An Air Force officer living near an Air Force base. Let's get Brass and go talk to him."

It was nearly 2 a.m. when the convoy of three cars – Catherine's Tahoe, Brass's sedan and an LVPD squad car with two uniformed officers – pulled up in front of Michael Everly's house. They came without sirens and lights to avoid waking the neighborhood. The two-story house was dark except for one room downstairs. Brass pounded on the front door and announced himself.

The door was opened quickly by a young man in his early 20s. He was dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt. His feet were bare. He looked tired and hadn't shaved in several days. Catherine liked his looks.

"Could you keep it down?" he said. "You'll wake the whole house."

"We need to see Michael Everly," Brass said.

"Excuse me?" the man said.

"Michael Everly," Brass said. "Now."

"He isn't here," the young man said.

"And you would be …?"

"Harry Everly. His son."

"Do you know where we can find your father?" Brass said.

"Yeah, I do," Harry said. "He's at the morgue. He died three days ago."

**xxxxxxx**

Catherine heard Greg gasp. She and Brass exchanged puzzled looks. How does a man commit rape and murder 65 hours after he dies?

"Can you tell us how your father died?" she said.

"He went into the hospital for a simple operation," Harry said, his eyes getting misty. "He had a small growth on his lung. The doctors were sure it was benign, but they thought they should get it out. He made it through the surgery just fine. The doctors told us he'd be home in a few days. He was in the recovery room when he had a stroke and died. The doctors think a blood clot might have formed after the operation and migrated to his brain. We won't know until there's an autopsy, and they're taking their own sweet time about getting it done."

"What hospital?" Catherine asked.

"Mountain Home," Harry said. "Dad's doctor is on staff there."

Catherine asked Harry if she could have a DNA sample from him.

"Why?"

"Just for comparison purposes. I just need to swab the inside of your cheek."

Harry shrugged and opened his mouth.

She thanked him. "And we're sorry for your loss," she added.

**xxxxxxx**

As it turned out, Harry Everly shared enough DNA alleles with his father to prove the relationship, but they were far from a perfect match. The semen found in the still-unidentified body under I-15 belonged exclusively to Michael Everly.

"Let's go take a look at that body, Greg," Catherine said.

Her phone rang as they headed out. The body would have to wait. There had been an explosion with fatalities east of Henderson.

**xxxxxxx**

Sara couldn't sleep. Brass had told her the psychiatrist had seen Grissom that afternoon, but Brass had no idea what his conclusions were. The judge would be the first to know and then the prosecutor and Alan Novak.

She badly wanted Grissom home, but she knew the likelihood was low, even if the doctor found Grissom perfectly sane. "How could any innocent man remain perfectly sane when he's locked in a cell about to go on trial for his life? So if he tested perfectly sane, it means he's crazy, and if he's crazy, he'll rot in jail. And if he tested crazy, same outcome. He doesn't stand a chance."

Sara thought she sounded like a rerun of an old MASH episode. Or _Catch 22._

Hank rolled over and licked her face. She rubbed the dog's stomach. "Sorry I woke you," she said.

**xxxxxxx**

It was after 8 a.m. when Catherine and Greg wrapped up the explosion. It happened in a fireworks factory. The two victims had broken in and somehow triggered the blast. The fire marshal was sorting it out.

"I'm going to stop off and see Sara before I go to the morgue," Catherine told Greg. "Want me to drop you at the lab first?"

"I'd like to see Sara," he said. "You think she'll let us in the house? We sorta smell like something burning."

"I think she will. I've been kind of chewing on a notion I think she'll want to hear."

They had just pulled up front of Sara's when Brass called.

"The I-15 vic is Patsy Rose, an employee of the Ballin' Kitty Escort Service."

"Cute," Catherine said.

"Her employer reporter her missing after she missed a couple of appointments with high rollers. IDed her off an autopsy photo. The crime scene was her apartment. Nick and Warrick went over the place every which way and found nothing. No prints, no hairs, no fibers that might have belonged to the killer. If he weren't already dead, we'd be dragging Michael Everly in for questioning."

"And the autopsy?"

"Nothing there, either, except the semen. Doc Robbins says he's never seen anything like it."

**xxxxxxx**

Sara had her nose back in the Cynthia Seibert file when the doorbell rang. Hank went through his welcome-home dance routine, only to be disappointed again when it wasn't Grissom.

"Hey, guys," Sara said. "Come in. Want some coffee?"

"Sure," Greg said.

Sara brought two steaming mugs. "Have you guys been playing with fire?"

"Yeah, I know. We reek," Catherine said. "But I want to tell you about this weird case we caught last night."

She detailed the DB rape and strangulation case and then got to the punch line.

"The semen matched a retired Air Force officer who died almost three days before this girl was killed," she said. "He'd had surgery at Mountain Home, and he was expected to make a full recovery. The stroke was completely unexpected."

"Get out," Sara said.

"Truth," Catherine replied. "This whole thing is too weird. Assuming Cynthia Seibert's killer and Patsy Rose's killer are the same person, he left no prints at either scene, and none of his own DNA."

"He wore a condom when he raped the women," Greg suggested.

"That would explain the absence of semen," Catherine said, "but it wouldn't explain why the lab didn't find any of his pubic hair caught up in the women's, why there were no epithelials, no sweat, nothing. How do you commit a rape and not leave something of yourself behind? Yet all the bruising, inside and out, is consistent with rape."

"The Strip Strangler managed," Sara recalled. "He shaved every inch of his body, and he wore thick latex gloves. So you're thinking the semen was planted?"

"I am," Catherine said. "And if that's true, it might have implications for another case with which you are intimately well-acquainted." She emphasized the word, intimately.

Sara raised an eyebrow, much as Grissom might have.

"Did anyone run an SEM scan on the semen found in Patsy Rose?" she asked.

"I don't know. That isn't part of the regular processing routine." Catherine said. "We can ask. And we can still do one if it's important."

"Yeah," Sara said. "I think that would be a good idea. If nothing else, it will show how much the semen has degraded, which should confirm the rape happened at the same time as the murder and therefore couldn't have been committed by a dead guy. And it might show us a whole lot more."

"The bruises on her thighs looked fresh," Greg said.

"I'm headed to the morgue right now, to look at both bodies," Catherine said. "Ecklie said you couldn't go into the lab. He didn't say anything about the morgue. Wanna come along?"

"You bet."

"Me, too," Greg said.


	7. Chapter 7

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 7.**

"My god, it's a committee," Doc Robbins said when Catherine, Greg and Sara entered his inner sanctum.

"We come in peace," Greg said.

"Not exactly the way most of my clients get here," Robbins said. "What's up?"

"You have the body of a retired Air Force officer here awaiting autopsy," Catherine said.

"Right," Robbins said. "And I feel badly about that. David and I have been so slammed we haven't had a chance to get to him. But we will today. His family deserves a chance to bury him and get closure."

"Do me a favor," Catherine said. "Examine him now. No cutting, just a skin check."

"And what am I looking for?" Robbins asked. He talked as he walked toward a stack of his refrigerated drawers.

Now Sara spoke up. "Anything in the genital area that points to sperm harvesting."

At first Robbins looked dumbfounded. Slowly, Sara saw understanding replace confusion. "Can you tell me why I'm doing this?" he said.

Catherine answered. "You found semen in our I-15 DB. It was a DNA match to another of your tenants, Air Force officer Michael Everly. The thing is, even though it's likely the girl was raped at the same time she was killed, it would have been hard for Michael Everly to do that, seeing as how he died three days earlier."

"Ah, an interesting conundrum," Robbins said. He pulled out a drawer. "Well, then, let's have a look. Which of you wants to help?"

Sara and Catherine responded in unison: "Greg."

**xxxxxxx**

They saw nothing at first. Robbins seemed to look everywhere. Greg seemed to avoid looking anywhere. Robbins came up shaking his head.

"Sara, hand me that magnifier," he said pointing to a table in the opposite corner.

It took him only ten seconds.

"Well, well," he said. "Would you look at this?"

Sara hurried to his side and took the glass. She put it over an area of the scrotum indicated by Robbins. And there it was. A needle mark. Greg began taking photographs.

"What hospital did this guy die in?" Sara said.

**xxxxxxx**

They couldn't go back to the lab because Sara was prohibited. So they went back to her apartment and started charting the evidence.

"Okay," Catherine said, "Everly was sent to the morgue from Mountain Home Hospital. After the McCaskey thing, you and Grissom were at Desert Palm."

Greg spoke up. "And don't forget that call we caught on Monday about the heart-attack patient at Western LV Medical Center screaming about somebody beating him up. That was in an ICU, where most patients can't fight off an attacker. The cops decided the old guy was having a nightmare. Maybe he wasn't."

"That's three different hospitals," Catherine said, thinking out loud. "Should we check for doctors on staff at all three?"

Sara shook her head. "There's nothing at this point to tie the perp to Desert Palm. If somebody used a syringe on Gil while he was in a coma, the puncture wound healed a long time ago."

Greg shivered. "I'm sure Grissom's glad he was out for that procedure. "This is enough to constitute reasonable doubt, isn't it, I mean where Grissom's concerned?"

"But it's not proof," Sara replied. "We might be able to free Gil on the basis of what we have. But it's not going to give him his life back."

"Wouldn't his freedom be enough?" Catherine said.

"For me, yes," Sara replied. "For Grissom, not even close."

**xxxxxxx**

Catherine's phone rang at that moment. It was Mia.

"I just finished up with the SEM on the ejaculate found in the I-15 DB," she said. "The sperm are dead, but not degraded. If I were called to testify, I'd have to say the rape and the murder happened at roughly the same time."

"Hold on Mia," Catherine said. She relayed the findings to Greg and Sara.

"Ask her if any of the sperm were alive when the swab got to the lab," Sara said.

Catherine relayed the question, glanced at Sara and shook her head. "Mia says she remembers clearly they were all dead on arrival."

"I want copies of that SEM scan right now," Sara said. Catherine knew she wouldn't take no for an answer.

**xxxxxxx**

Catherine and Greg returned to the lab to shower, change clothes and get the SEM photos from the second murder case.

Sara called Alan Novak and asked him to come to the apartment in about two hours.

"You have something new?" Grissom's attorney asked.

"We have reasonable doubt," she told him. "Now we're going for proof."

Sara closed her phone, and it rang. It was Catherine.

"I stopped by Ecklie's office to brief him," she said. "He was incredulous, but he actually seemed happy to hear the news. He said if we took one more step toward resolution for Grissom, he'd revise Grissom's status from leave-without-pay to paid leave, retroactive to the day of his arrest."

"That's good of him, but I don't think money's the biggest thing on Grissom's mind right now. You on your way back here?"

"That's the other reason I called," Catherine said. "Ecklie wants me to rerun Mia's work with him supervising."

"Mia's gonna freak," Sara said.

"No, I explained it, and she's good with it. She understands it's all to build a credible, irrefutable case to prove Grissom's innocence. Nobody on the team's going to object to anything that will set Grissom free. So I'm sending Greg back to your place with the photos. I took the liberty of looking at them, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary, but you might have a different perspective."

"Alan Novak will be here in a couple of hours," Sara said. "He and the prosecutor are meeting with Judge Griffin to see the psychiatric report on Gil and to argue about his status. If she rules in Gil's favor, he could be processed out this afternoon."

"Don't get your hopes up on that front, Sara," Catherine said. "It's a capital case, and bail is a stretch, even for someone like Grissom. Besides, I don't think he'll mind spending a few more days in a cell if it means coming home a totally free man with this nightmare fully explained and another suspect booked for his trial date."

**xxxxxxx**

"Oh my God," Sara whispered when she saw the photos.

"What?" Greg said.

Sara didn't answer. Instead, she opened the Seibert file and compared Michael Everly's sperm photos to Grissom's.

"They might not look exactly the same," Greg said. "Different donors. Different degradation. The guys' little tails go first."

"The thing is," Sara said, "they do look exactly the same. Make a pot of coffee, and make yourself at home, Greg. I have some phone calls to make and some research to do."

**xxxxxxx**

It took nearly two hours on the computer, but Sara found her answer just seconds before Alan Novak rang the doorbell.

She typed a command into the computer, and Grissom's freedom started rolling off the printer.

**xxxxxxx**

Novak walked in looking glum.

"Judge Griffin ruled for the prosecution," he said. "The psych report had nothing unfavorable in it, but the judge just couldn't see any good way around the general rules for those accused of capital crimes. I stopped off at the jail on way here and told Grissom. He was pretty disappointed, as you would expect. It was so bad I toyed with the idea of asking that he be put on suicide watch."

"Did you tell him we're making progress?" Sara said. "We have to give him reason to hope."

"I didn't," Novak said. "I don't know what you think you've found, so I didn't want to get his hopes up just to have them dashed again. That, I think, would send him over the edge."

Sara winced. She saw the logic Novak's decision. Still, it was painful to think about Grissom locked up in a cell with such a bleak view of his future. He needed hope to survive.

She forced the emotion away. She got coffee for Novak, then collected the pages off the printer, the Seibert file and the new SEM scan. She called Greg and Novak to the dining table and spread out her theory in front of them.

**xxxxxxx**

"We're going to wait a few minutes to start," Sara said. "Catherine in on her way over with Ecklie, and some additional data Mia worked up. I'd like to present this whole picture in one piece."

"And you think it will help Grissom how?" Novak asked.

"I think it will prove he didn't rape Cynthia Seibert. I think it also will prove Michael Everly didn't rape the girl under I-15."

"Will it point us toward the real killer?" Novak asked.

"I doubt it," she said. "But that's the next problem. And it isn't our problem. It's a police problem. The important thing for us now is to prove Grissom innocent and get him out of jail."

**xxxxxxx**

They made small talk for another 30 minutes until everyone was fidgety. Catherine called to say they'd been delayed by Ecklie.

"What's his problem?" Sara asked, more than a little irritated. Every minute delayed was another minute for Grissom behind bars, losing hope. It was killing her to think about the overwhelming grief and despair he must be feeling.

"Conrad's supervising something Mia's doing," Catherine said. "Believe me, it's worth waiting for."

It was nearly dark when Ecklie and Catherine showed up. Catherine was grinning and even Ecklie was smiling. Catherine was carrying two folders. She handed one to Sara. Sara opened it, and then she was smiling, too.

"What's that one?" Sara asked, nodding at the file still in Catherine's hand.

"That's our surprise finish," Catherine said.

When everyone was settled around the table, Sara began.

"When you test semen for DNA, you do a vaginal swab on the rape victim, extract the genetic material from the swab and do a DNA profile. It's very rare that you'd ever actually photograph the sperm, let alone use SEM."

"What's SEM?" Novak said.

"Oh, sorry. Scanning electron microscopy. To put it simply, it takes a highly magnified photograph with very high resolution, so it almost looks three-dimensional. The lab probably wouldn't have used SEM in any of these cases under normal circumstances. When I asked Mia this afternoon why she'd done it on the first sample, the sample taken from Cynthia Seibert, she said it was because Grissom had been implicated. She wanted the file to contain the evidence from every possible angle. Bless her for that."

"So what did we learn?" Novak asked.

"When I first looked at the photos in the Seibert file, I didn't notice anything," Sara said. "When I looked again, more closely, there appeared to be some sort of distortion. You had to look hard to see it. It rang some little bell in the back of my mind, but I couldn't form the whole thought."

Ecklie drummed his fingers on the table. "Then Doc Robbins found the needle mark on Michael Everly …"

"Yeah," Sara said. "That triggered my thought about sperm harvesting. So I asked Catherine to get Mia to do SEM on the Everly semen. It had the same distorted appearance as Grissom's."

"And you figured out why?" Novak said.

"Freezing sperm is an excellent way to preserve it. The sperm cells remain viable for a long time. But if sperm isn't frozen correctly, or if it isn't thawed correctly, the heads can take on a bloated appearance, which is exactly what I was seeing in the two SEM photos. It wasn't a huge thing. I might not have noticed if I hadn't really been looking for something out of the ordinary."

Sara's mouth was getting dry. "Anybody want a bottle of water?" she asked as she approached the refrigerator. Everyone did except Ecklie.

Sara sat down and started the narrative again. "Then I began to wonder what the sperm had been frozen in. When you take sperm directly from a testicle, there's no motility. They can't go anywhere. It isn't until the pick up seminal fluid on the way to ejaculation that they get something to swim in. The seminal fluid also supports and nourishes the sperm. They can't survive without it."

"And the sperm were all dead in the two victims?" Novak said. He was now fully engaged in the story.

"Well, they might have been dead in Cynthia Seibert, anyway," Sara said. "Her TOD was set at a full eight hours before the body was found, and by the time she was processed and taken to the morgue, where the vaginal swab was taken, it was …" Sara consulted her notes … "another two and a half, almost three hours. That's a long time for the little guys to hang around."

She pushed the Seibert file away and drew Patsy Rose's file in front of her. "Now, the I-15 vic was a much fresher body, and some of the sperm in her still should have been alive. But Mia says they weren't. So this afternoon I asked her to test the two samples again, this time looking specifically for seminal fluid." She looked at everyone sitting at her table and grinned. "There wasn't any."

Novak slapped the table and laughed. "Unbelievable. Wonderful. So what did the killer use to convey the sperm into the victims?"

"It could have been anything, even tap water," Sara said. "He didn't particularly care if the sperm died. All he cared about was planting somebody else's DNA."

"Unbelievable," Novak said again, grinning broadly.

"There's more," Catherine said. "While we were waiting for results on the seminal fluid analysis, Mia started reviewing DNA results on other recent rape and murder victims. So far, she's found one more with the same characteristics as Seibert and Patsy Rose. The sperm in this third case exhibit the same bloated look, and there is no seminal fluid associated with them, either. There's no DNA record on the donor, so we don't know who it was, but I'm guessing the sperm were harvested from an unconscious patient in a local hospital."

"What was the date on that early crime?" Novak asked.

"Five weeks before Cynthia Seibert," Catherine said.

"And what's to say Grissom couldn't have done that, too?" Novak asked.

"Well, we know he couldn't have killed Patsy," Catherine said. "He was in jail at the time. And at the time of first murder, Grissom, Warrick and I were together on a case in front of dozens of witnesses."

Sara sighed. "So we have a fully realized serial rapist and murderer out there."

"Yep," Novak said. "And I have an innocent client."


	8. Chapter 8

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 8.**

"Can I handle this?" Brass asked. "I owe him."

Sara smiled. "Okay. I'll be out front with the car. Don't take too long."

Brass grinned. "No problem." Then he wrapped Sara in his arms. His eyes brimmed. "I'm so sorry about all of this, Honey. I put you both through hell."

Sara pulled back and put his hands on the sides of Brass's face. She kissed his cheek.

"You did what you had to do, Jim. I don't blame you. Gil won't blame you. But you gotta find this guy and get him off the streets."

"We sent a security alert to every hospital and medical clinic in Clark County, warning them to be on the lookout, especially around the wards and rooms where patients are sedated and unconscious. We'll get him."

Sara patted Brass's shoulder, turned and left the building.

**xxxxxxx**

Brass was sitting in the interrogation room when Grissom was led in, shackled hand and foot. He no longer wore a dressing on the cut on his left temple, and Brass winced when he saw the black stitches holding together the fiery red wound. Brass thought his friend looked like a beaten man. His face was gaunt and sallow, and his eyes were dead.

"So what do you have in mind for tonight, Jim?" Grissom asked. "Chinese water torture, or something more bloody?"

Brass, wearing his best bad-news face told the guard, "You can uncuff him. Then wait outside."

"But, Captain, he's …"

"It's all right, Chip. It'll be fine."

The guard did as ordered and left. Grissom rubbed his wrists and grimaced. The skin was heavily chafed. Brass knew the cuffs were painful. They were meant for criminals, not innocent men.

"Sit down," Brass said.

"I don't want to sit down," Grissom replied.

"Sit down," Brass repeated. "Please."

Grissom sat.

"Have you seen Sara?" he asked.

"I have," Brass said.

"How is she?"

"She's okay."

Grissom's brow knitted. He looked profoundly sad. Brass could feel Gil's heart breaking.

"I have a message from Alan Novak," Brass said. "He's dropping you as a client."

Grissom's eyes widened. Then he closed them and his head fell.

"Just perfect. What do I do now?" It was a rhetorical question; Grissom sounded completely defeated.

Brass picked up a large brown paper bag off the floor and slid it across the table. "Put these on," he said.

Grissom raised his head and looked at the bag without interest or curiosity.

"Go ahead," Brass said.

Grissom pulled the bag to where he could see inside. He looked up in surprise.

"These are my clothes," he said.

"That's what the property clerk tells me," Brass said with a small smile.

Grissom brightened. "You mean I made bail after all?"

"No," Brass said, grinning. "You made freedom. Total exoneration. The charges have been dropped. You've been processed out. And Sara's waiting for you right outside the front door."

Grissom leaped to his feet. The expressions crossed his face in rapid succession: Astonishment. Disbelief. Astonishment again. Curiosity. Confusion. Joy. "What happened?" he finally asked.

"Sara will explain it."

Grissom started for the interrogation room door.

"Hey," Brass said. "You're going to have to change before you leave and give the jumpsuit back, or I'll be forced to arrest you for grand theft – fashion."

**xxxxxxx**

Grissom stopped at the top of the steps. Sara was leaning against the grille of the Tahoe, gazing off up the street. He inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air and watched her until she sensed him and turned her head. They moved toward each other, he down the short series of steps, she up onto the sidewalk. They didn't run. Neither seemed to want to rush the moment. They had the rest of their lives.

When they were within touching distance, they stopped and locked eyes, reveling in the joy of being close again.

Grissom reached out and touched Sara's cheek. She leaned into his touch, put a hand over his and smiled. He took her shoulders and pulled her to his chest, encircled her with his arms and bent to kiss her.

When the kiss ended, they stood there for several minutes, wrapped up together, their bodies pressed tightly.

Neither had said a word.

Then Sara gently pushed him out of the embrace and took his hand.

"Let's go home," she said.

**xxxxxxx**

This time Hank wouldn't be disappointed. He welcomed his master with his happy dance. Grissom crouched, and when the dog stood still long enough, Grissom scratched his head and rubbed his chest.

But Grissom had a dozen questions and a thing or two he wanted to do. He turned his attention back to Sara.

He stood and embraced her again.

"I've missed you," he said.

"I've almost lost you twice," she said. "I think I'm going to keep you locked in the house from now on."

They kissed again. Grissom felt the familiar body tingling, and he knew Sara felt it, too, as she moved against him.

"Let me get you something to eat," she said. "You look like you've dropped some weight. It's only been a week, but your clothes are hanging on you."

"There's not much to recommend jail food," he said. "And when you're facing a hopeless trial for crimes you didn't commit, it tends to take away your appetite."

"Well, let's see what's in the refrigerator that won't taste like cardboard."

Together they steamed fresh vegetables and wrapped them in buttery omelets with copious amounts of cheese and fresh-fruit garnishes. While a fresh French baguette warmed in the oven, Sara took a bottle of Stag's Leap chardonnay from the refrigerator and showed it to him. He smiled in appreciation.

They ate and drank slowly. She told him everything. He interrupted only a few times with questions.

"That was a fine piece of forensic detective work, Sara," he said when she finished. "Somehow, 'Thank you' doesn't seem sufficient."

"It is. You're welcome," she said. "Now it's up to the cops to find the killer."

"And there could be additional victims?"

"Yeah," she said. "The team's checking DNA on every rape case in the last year. If necessary, I guess they'll go back even farther. There might be some other innocent guys in jail."

Grissom bit his lower lip in thought.

"So is there a working theory?" he asked. "Are the male victims simply random, targets of opportunity who happened to be lying around hospitals? Or was I targeted specifically and the other crimes committed to make it look random?"

"I don't think we'll know that until the killer's caught. Ecklie asked Sophia to start reviewing your cases for anyone who might be carrying around a lethal grudge."

Grissom folded his napkin and placed it on the table. He thought about his history.

"She could make a career out of that," he said.

They cleaned up the kitchen, and then they were in each other's arms again.

"You sleepy?" he asked.

"Not really," she said. "But I would like to go to bed."

**xxxxxxx**

They made love with intensity and emotion, but with a gentleness totally opposite the violence with which they had spent the last week. They explored one another with their hands and their mouths, and when she begged for him, he was more than ready to oblige her. Sara's explosive climax triggered Grissom's own, and the pleasure lasted so long it drained both of them.

He continued to lie on top of her, still inside her, never wanting this moment to end.

When he finally rolled off, she lifted herself on an elbow and whispered, "Good sex is the gift that keeps on giving."

He laughed. "You're insatiable."

"I'll give you a few minutes," she said. "And then I'll help you."

He reached up and stroked her hair.

"Helping me is what you do best," he said.

**xxxxxxx**

Later, with Sara cradled in his arms, Grissom was on the cusp of sleep when he felt her begin to tremble. He came fully awake and realized she was crying softly.

"Honey?" he said. "What is it?"

"I was so afraid I was going to lose you," she said softly.

He turned on his side, so he was facing her, and began stroking her hair again.

"Well, you're not going to lose me," he said. "So that's a thought you should put away forever."

But her fears triggered his own memories: of Sara injured, lost and dying in the desert, of Sara kidnapped by Eugene McCaskey.

Even as he continued trying to calm her, Grissom's eyes began to sting. A single tear tracked down his face before he could stop it.

**xxxxxxx**

They had been sleeping less than two hours when the phone rang. It was the first good, calm sleep Grissom had experienced in a week, and his mind came awake reluctantly. He fumbled for the cell phone and looked at the caller ID.

"Brass?" he mumbled.

Now Sara sat up.

Grissom answered.

"Hey, I wouldn't be calling you so late – or tonight at all, for that matter – except it's really important," Brass said. "We just caught a suspect with a syringe poised over an unconscious patient in the cardiac ICU at Desert Palm."

Now Grissom was fully awake. "Who is he?"

"He's an orderly on staff there," Brass said. "It certainly gives him the experience to find his way around hospitals."

"That's not what I asked, Jim. I asked who he is. What's his name?"

"I think you'd better come downtown and see for yourself," Brass said. "The two of you have met before."

Sara asked if she could come along.

"Absolutely," Grissom said. "You've earned the right."

Brass met them at the security door.

"We searched this guy's apartment," he said. "We found four vials of semen in his freezer, right next to the pork chops. Not exactly what you'd call optimal cryogenic circumstances. What are you willing to bet the semen's not his? But the thing that'll gag you was in his closet. Four enormous, uh, sexual aids, for lack of a better term. He used them to rape and batter and then just tossed them in a cardboard box. Each one had what appears to be blood and vaginal fluids dried on it. And on the base of each one, a date."

"The date of the murders," Sara said.

Brass nodded.

"Four?" Grissom said. Sara had mentioned only three.

"Yeah, I guess there's one we haven't found yet."

They all fell silent as Brass led them to the observation window of the interrogation where Det. Casco sat with handcuffed suspect who appeared to be about 14 years old.

Sara and Grissom exchanged glances, each asking the other wordlessly if the suspect looked familiar. Sara shrugged and shook her head. Grissom turned to Brass.

"How old is he?" Grissom asked. "He looks like a kid."

"He's 19," Brass said. "Not much more than a kid, but every bit an adult in the ways of rape and murder."

"What's his name?"

"Why don't you go ask him?"

**xxxxxxx**

**A/N: **Okay, the next installment is the final one. I'll give you all a few hours to try to figure out who the guy is before I post the end. (PLEASE don't post guesses as reviews so you don't spoil things for others – send me a private email.) And thanks for reading.

j


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **Okay, here it is. You all are hysterically funny. Nobody guessed who the bad guy is, but I had some very entertaining suggestions, including Ecklie's son, the resident who helped operate on Grissom in "Edge of Forever," to a long, long, long list nephew of Grissom's who was scared by one of Grissom's pet spiders at the age of 4. Thanks for making me laugh.

**NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE**

**Chapter 9**

Grissom entered the interrogation room. Casco stood.

"Same room. Very different situation," the detective said. "Sorry I roughed you up."

He extended a hand and Grissom took it, but his focus was on the suspect.

"I'll be right outside," Casco said.

Grissom pulled out a chair and stradled it backwards. He studied the young man for a moment. Nice looking. Slight of build but wiry strong. Light brown hair, longish. Gray eyes. You don't see gray eyes often. Grissom thought he would have remembered.

"Do you know me?" Grissom asked.

"Yeah, I know you," the suspect answered. The surly tone belied the almost angelic face.

"Do I know you?" Grissom said.

"Yeah, but you probably don't remember."

"What's your name?"

"Craig Mason," the suspect replied.

It took Grissom a moment, but then it all came thundering back.

"You're Paul Millander's son?" Grissom said. He thought he sounded incredulous, and he was.

"His adopted son.

Grissom's head was spinning. Paul Millander had been one of the most unsettling cases of his career. Paul Millander, a trans-sexual born Pauline. Paul Millander, an adult man leading two lives: a loner who made Halloween specialty items in one life, a traffic court judge named Mason with a wife and son in the other. He murdered men whose birthdays fell on the same date as the murder of his own father, and he staged the killings to look like suicide, just as his father's death had been staged.

At one point, Grissom thought he would be the killer's next victim, since the date was his birthday, too. But the final victim became Millander himself.

Grissom's frown deepened when he looked back at Craig Mason.

"Your father tried to frame me for one of his murders," he said. "He used a fake Halloween hand to plant my fingerprints around the scene."

"He was messing with your head," Mason said.

"So you thought you'd carry it one step farther and mess with my life?" Grissom said.

"You ruined my family," Mason said, hatred ripe in his voice. "My father killed himself because of you. Everything in my life since has been part of a payback plan. I studied you. I studied your cases. I even followed you sometimes. I took the freakin' hospital job so I could hang out with doctors and nurses and figure out a way to do to you what you did to my father."

Grissom's features softened a bit. What a waste. He no longer saw a cold-blooded, calculating killer sitting across from him. He saw a tormented young man who saw what he wanted to see and believed what he wanted to believe.

"Craig, listen to me. Your father didn't kill himself because of me or anything I did to him. He killed himself because he couldn't live with who he was and what he'd become. He saw his own father murdered. That's something no child should have to witness."

"Sort of like me, huh?" Mason said.

That thought took Grissom's breath away.

**xxxxxxx**

**Epilogue.**

When they left police headquarters, Grissom asked Sara to drive. He was too distracted. The full weight of the last eight days had crashed down on him as he walked away from the interrogation room where a 19-year-old man disclosed an anger so deep it had driven him to assault at least four people and kill at least four more just to exact revenge on Grissom.

A wave of nausea had overcome him. His mouth began to water. Grissom separated himself from Brass and Sara and walked into the men's room.

He got sick.

He was sweating. He flushed the toilet and leaned against the wall of the stall. He had no idea how long he stood there before the air conditioning dried his skin and the weakness began to fade.

"Grissom? You okay?" Brass's voice outside the stall.

Grissom unlocked the door and emerged.

"You look like hell," Brass said.

Grissom couldn't think of anything to say. He really didn't want to talk. He walked to a sink, washed his hands and rinsed his mouth as best he could. He splashed cold water on his face, and then leaned heavily on the sink, staring at the drain, reliving the brief encounter with Craig Mason.

He felt Brass's hand on his shoulder. "Why don't you come outside and sit down for a few minutes."

Grissom nodded and allowed Brass to steer him a few doors to his office. Sara was waiting. Concern clouded her face. Brass planted Grissom in a chair. He took two small bottles of water from the small refrigerator behind his desk. He handed one to Sara, opened the second one and gave it to Grissom.

Grissom closed his eyes and dropped his head. He didn't think he'd ever been so tired.

**xxxxxxx**

When she got him home, Sara suggested he go back to bed. He went to the sofa, instead, and stretched out there. He still hadn't said a word.

He threw an arm over his eyes. Sara hoped he might drift off, but his left hand was so tightly clenched at his side, his breathing so ragged, she suspected he was replaying the whole Millander case, and it was tearing him up, just as it had when it unfolded originally.

Grissom's cell phone rang. He made no move to answer it. Sara picked it up. "Ecklie" appeared in the Caller ID window.

Sara moved off toward the bedroom and answered it.

"Hey, Ecklie, it's Sara," she said before he could speak. "I didn't have a chance to thank you for ignoring a few lab rules so we could rethink the case against Grissom."

"You're welcome. It was a big risk with a big reward. I've got my top CSI back. And that's why I'm calling."

Sara waited.

"Jim Brass just brought me up to speed. He told me what happened at the jail."

"Yeah," Sara said. "It was pretty rough. Grissom's a wreck."

"It's been that kind of week for him."

"Yeah."

"I'm keeping him on mandatory paid leave for another two weeks, at least," he said. "I want you to get him away from here, as far away from Las Vegas as the two of you can afford to go. Go to Hawaii. Or Paris. Or Istanbul. Anywhere but here. Give yourselves a chance to recharge. Take three weeks if he needs it. Or four. He's got plenty of vacation piled up. All I ask is that when you come home, you bring the old Grissom with you."

After Sara hung up, she checked on Grissom. His breathing had grown more measured. He didn't look relaxed, but she was pretty sure he was sleeping.

She turned away and went to the computer.

**xxxxxxx**

When Grissom awoke, he had no idea what time it was. He raised his arm to look at his watch and noticed Sara sitting in a chair across from him, watching him.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. His mouth tasted the way the inside of a Dumpster looks.

"Don't go away," he told Sara. He headed for the bathroom.

When he returned, he saw that Sara had moved to the sofa and was reading several sheets of printer paper.

"What do you have there?" he asked.

"Just some research I did while you were asleep."

He sat beside her and reached for the papers. She held them away.

"What?" he said. He knew when she was teasing him.

"Ecklie called."

He frowned and remembered his phone had rung. "What did he want?"

"He's put you on paid leave for a minimum of two weeks. He said you could take up to four."

Grissom felt irritation. It didn't take much to trigger that where Ecklie was concerned.

"Hey, cut him a little slack," Sara said gently. "He authorized our parallel investigation."

"I know," Grissom said. "I just don't like owing him anything."

"He's not going to try to collect," Sara said. "He made that pretty clear. Uh, anyway, he said I should get you out of town, away from Las Vegas."

"There's no where I want to go," Grissom insisted.

"Sure there is," Sara said. "And I've already made reservations."

Grissom felt bewildered.

"First," she said, "we're flying to Lima. That's, uh, in Peru."

He scowled at her, and she smiled.

"From Lima, we fly to Puerto Maldonado. Then it's a two-and-a-half hour trip by boat on the Infiermo River to Refugio Amazonas, and a ten-minute walk to the lodge. The lodge is on the Tambopata National Reserve and the starting point for expeditions to the Tambopata Research Center. After a week there …"

Grissom felt himself grin. "The Amazon Rainforest."

"You said you wanted to go back," she said. "And I've never been. I've heard there are really cool bugs there."

He stood and drew her up to him. He kissed her lightly on the nose.

"When do we leave?" he asked.

"Day after tomorrow."

"Good," he said. "Then I have time to take you somewhere else for a while."

He put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the bedroom.

# # #

5


End file.
